Part 1The Mute Heiress Strikes Back: The Eight-Year-Old Wall Street Wolf

I didn’t speak a single word until I was eight years old.

Everyone in the Sterling family called me a retard. My mother would wipe her tears in secret, convinced she had given birth to an autistic daughter.

My father’s eyes were always filled with disappointment when he looked at me. Yet, out of sheer pride and concern for his image, he never sent me to a special needs school.

Then came the day a Wall Street shark marched into our headquarters to force a hostile takeover. He was so arrogant that he verbally slaughtered the entire boardroom, leaving a room full of elite executives shivering in silence. No one dared to breathe.

I stood in the corner, bored to tears.

I was annoyed.

So, I took a step forward.

And spoke the very first words of my life.

* * *

My name is Eleanor Sterling.

The eldest granddaughter of the Sterling family, and the sole direct heir to Sterling Enterprises.

By all accounts, this was a life born with a diamond-encrusted silver spoon.

But I was eight years old, and I still hadn’t said a word.

Everyone in the Sterling empire knew the truth: the eldest heiress was a dimwit.

My mother, Grace, came from an old-money Boston academic family. She was gentle, cultured, and poured every ounce of her love into me.

She would hold me, teaching me with endless patience.

“Eleanor, say it with Mommy. Mom… my…”

I would just look at her, silent.

The light in her eyes would slowly dim.

Then she would turn her back, secretly dabbing at the corners of her eyes with a tissue.

She thought I couldn't see.

But I knew everything.

It wasn't that I couldn’t speak; I just didn’t want to.

I had been reincarnated with my memories intact.

In my previous life, I was an exhausted, fast-talking financial analyst. I had spent thirty years talking until my throat bled, and I was utterly burnt out.

In this life, I just wanted to be a quiet, useless rich kid and enjoy the ride.

But I underestimated the weight of the title “Sterling Heiress.”

It wasn't just a symbol of wealth; it was a shackle.

My father, Arthur Sterling, the CEO of Sterling Enterprises, was a cutthroat businessman.

Every time he looked at me, there was a glimmer of hope.

“Eleanor, do you know what this is?”

He’d point to the numbers on a quarterly financial report.

I would nod.

“Can you tell Daddy what our net profit is for this quarter?”

I would reach out my little hand and accurately tap the exact figure.

The hope in his eyes would flare brighter.

And then, he would ask the question he wanted the answer to most.

“Eleanor, call me Daddy. Just once. Let me hear it.”

I would look at him, remaining completely mute.

The light in his eyes would extinguish instantly, like a bucket of ice water over an open flame.

All that was left was disappointment. A thick, suffocating disappointment.

He would sit in silence for a long time, then stand up and storm out.

Sigh.

That heavy sigh felt like it could shatter the glass walls of the entire executive floor.

I knew that if I wasn't the only direct granddaughter, and if my mother’s family wasn't so influential, my position as the heir would have been stripped away years ago.

The looks my cousins gave me had also morphed from initial intimidation to undisguised mockery.

“Eleanor, did you understand a single thing the French tutor said today?”

The one speaking was my Uncle Robert’s daughter, Chloe.

She was only a year younger than me, but she was sharp-tongued, articulate, and deeply favored by my father.

I glanced at her, too lazy to engage.

That only made her smile wider.

“Oh, my bad. I forgot Eleanor is a natural-born genius. She knows everything without having to speak, unlike us ordinary mortals who actually have to study.”

“Chloe, don’t be mean,” chimed in Harper, my other cousin, putting on a sickeningly sweet display of fake sympathy.

“Eleanor just thinks we’re beneath her. It’s called being a late bloomer. Understand?”

They played off each other flawlessly. The nannies and maids standing nearby kept their heads bowed, but their shoulders were shaking slightly.

They were laughing.

Laughing at the mute idiot.

I walked past them, my face expressionless.

It was like watching two grasshoppers jumping around in front of me.

Boring.

And childish.

My mother saw all of this, and her heart broke for me.

That night, she held me again, her tears soaking the shoulder of my pajamas.

“My sweet Eleanor, why won’t you speak?”

“Even if it’s just one word. Just one word, and Mommy could die happy.”

I could feel her body trembling.

It was the raw despair of a mother.

My heart wasn’t made of stone.

In that moment, my resolve wavered.

Maybe… maybe it was time to open my mouth.

Just as I parted my lips, trying to force out a rusty syllable.

Rapid footsteps echoed outside the study.

Mr. Carson, our veteran butler, practically stumbled into the room.

“Mrs. Sterling! It’s bad!”

“The team from New York is here!”

“That Wall Street shark, Marcus Thorne—he’s already in the building!”

My mother’s face went pale.

Marcus Thorne.

That name was a dark cloud hanging over Sterling Enterprises.

He was Wall Street’s most vicious vulture, specializing in aggressively shorting and acquiring legacy family corporations.

In the past few years, he had already swallowed up three companies the size of ours.

“What is he doing here?” my mother asked.

Mr. Carson’s voice was trembling.

“He… he says he’s here to negotiate a buyout. He was incredibly disrespectful. He said he’s here to give the Sterling family a ‘dignified exit from the stage of history’!”

My mother staggered back, gripping the edge of the mahogany desk for support.

A “negotiated buyout” was just corporate speak for a hostile takeover.

A massive storm was about to hit.

I looked up at the gray sky outside the window.

Well then.

It looked like my dream of being a quiet, useless rich kid was officially over.

Fine.

There are always some blind flies that insist on forcing a sleeping lion—no, a lioness—to open her eyes.

My father called an emergency meeting of all family members and core executives in the top-floor boardroom.

I was dragged along and placed in the corner.

It was tradition; the eldest heir was required to audit major family decisions.

Normally, I would just find a corner, stand there all morning, and zone out.

But today, the atmosphere was toxic.

You could hear a pin drop in the boardroom. The faces of the executives were ashen with humiliation.

My father sat at the head of the table, his face dark as thunder.

Standing opposite him was a tall man in a bespoke suit.

Behind a pair of gold-rimmed glasses were eyes as sharp as a falcon’s.

This was Marcus Thorne. A ruthless predator raised in the concrete jungle of Wall Street.

“Mr. Sterling, is this your company’s idea of hospitality?”

Marcus spoke, his voice dripping with condescension.

“I flew in from New York on a private jet for this, and this is what you show me?”

He pointed a long, manicured finger at the terrified executives shrinking in their seats.

“A room full of glorified bean-counters!”

“I talk capital, and you talk about sentiment.”

“I talk market trends, and you talk about your century-old legacy.”

“Pathetic!”

“Utterly pathetic!”

He let out a brazen, arrogant laugh. The sound echoed painfully through the solemn boardroom.

“Mr. Thorne!”

The Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Henderson, stood up, shaking with rage.

“This is the board of Sterling Enterprises! You will not speak to us this way!”

Marcus shot him a sideways glance, sneering.

“Henderson. I remember you.”

“You’re the one who kept rambling yesterday about how ‘family businesses have a soul.’”

“Let me tell you how Wall Street works. A soul without profit is just a corpse!”

“Only the weak use sentiment to mask their incompetence!”

Mr. Henderson’s face turned purple. He pointed a trembling finger at Marcus. “You… you…” He couldn’t catch his breath, and suddenly, he collapsed backward.

“Mr. Henderson!”

The people next to him scrambled to catch him.

The boardroom erupted into chaos.

My father slammed his hand on the table and roared, “Enough!”

Marcus dialed it back slightly, but the contempt on his face remained.

He gave my father a mock salute, totally dismissive.

“Mr. Sterling, I won’t waste your time.”

“The investment committee at my hedge fund has made its decision. Your stock won’t survive the next fiscal year.”

“Sell it now, and we’ll give you three billion.”

“If you wait for us to start shorting you, you’ll be lucky to walk away with a billion.”

“Also, that prime real estate you own on the Southside? We’re taking it for luxury condo development.”

“Oh, and I hear your R&D team is decent. We plan to poach the entire department…”

Before he could even finish.

The boardroom exploded.

A lowball buyout, stealing their prime real estate, and gutting their core tech team!

Was this a negotiation?

This was a butchering!

“This is extortion!”

“Get the hell out of our building!”

“Arthur, we have to fight him!”

On Uncle Robert’s side of the table, several hot-tempered shareholders couldn’t hold back anymore.

Marcus sneered.

“Fight?”

“Be my guest.”

He looked directly at Uncle Robert.

“I know you. You’re Robert, the second brother, right? Three years ago, how much did you lose on that commercial real estate venture you spearheaded? Two hundred million? Three hundred million?”內

Uncle Robert’s face flushed crimson, like he had just been slapped. The veins in his neck popped, but he couldn't form a single word of defense.

Marcus turned his gaze to another executive.

“And you, the CMO? How much did you burn on ad spend during Cyber Monday last year? What was your conversion rate? Did that pathetic bump in sales even cover the marketing budget?”

The CMO lowered his head in utter shame.

Marcus’s eyes swept the room, and every single person who had been shouting just seconds ago fell dead silent.

The boardroom descended into silence once more.

A humiliating, powerless silence.

I stood in the corner, watching it all.

These were the so-called elites of Sterling Enterprises.

The CFO couldn't handle the heat, and the CMO had his worst failures weaponized against him.

A room full of powerful executives was being verbally slaughtered by a Wall Street vulture, and not one of them had the backbone to fight back.

I was getting sleepy.

Honestly.

This scene was even more pathetic than I had anticipated.

It was like watching a group of grown men getting cornered in an alley by a street thug, getting slapped one by one, and none of them even daring to squeak.

My father’s chest was heaving.

I knew he was on the verge of exploding.

But he couldn’t.

Because everything Marcus had said was true.

Sterling Enterprises' profits were dropping.

This was the tragedy of the weak.

Marcus was highly satisfied with the effect he’d created.

He cleared his throat, ready to lay out even more outrageous demands.

“Since no one has any objections, I’ll assume we’re all in agreement.”

“Our fund also requires…”

His incessant talking sounded like a fly buzzing endlessly in my ear.

I really had intended to just be a quiet spectator.

But this fly was just too loud.

I was annoyed.

I was genuinely annoyed.

In this deathly quiet room, where everyone had their heads bowed, no one noticed me in the corner.

I moved.

I took a step forward.

Just one step.

Out of the shadows of the corner, and into the harsh overhead light.